2of2Protesters at the Thursday meeting demanded PG&E be held accountable for deaths caused by November’s Camp Fire in Butte County.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle 2018

Over the cries of protesters demanding Pacific Gas and Electric Co. be held responsible for recent wildfires, state regulators agreed Thursday to start creating a process for the utility to follow before it can pass costs from 2017 fires along to its customers.

The unanimous vote by the California Public Utilities Commission does not pertain to any specific fire. Rather, it lets commissioners start crafting a test of a utility’s financial condition — what they call a “bankruptcy stress test” — that PG&E can take advantage of to figure out how much of the fire costs it can bear on its own before customers are asked to shoulder the rest.

The commissioners’ vote was prompted by a state law passed last year that lets the test be applied only for 2017 fires. Further legislative action is needed before PG&E could use it for any blaze after that, including last year’s Camp Fire, the cause of which is still under investigation but may have been started by utility equipment.

Michael Picker, the president of the utilities commission, reiterated the limited scope of the vote before he and his colleagues moved forward at their meeting in San Francisco. He said commissioners were “solely focused” on establishing a general methodology they will use in a specific case later.

“It’s an important piece of a larger puzzle on wildfire issues,” Picker said.

But his comments were not enough to satisfy the concerns of demonstrators who held up signs saying “No PG&E bailout.” They spoke forcefully in public comments and later burst into chants criticizing PG&E and Picker.

Activist Leslie Dreyer called the bill that prompted the commission’s vote, SB901, a “sham policy.” She said PG&E is “responsible for deaths” related to recent wildfires — a point echoed by the group later as it read off names of people who died in the Camp Fire.

“Caring about shareholders instead of people is just disgusting,” Dreyer told commissioners. “We’re not gonna stand for it.”

PG&E has already been found responsible for a series of damaging 2017 wildfires, though the cause of the worst one from that year — the Tubbs Fire that ravaged neighborhoods in and around Santa Rosa — is still under investigation.

State law now requires the commission to determine the maximum amount of money PG&E could pay without “harming ratepayers or materially impacting its ability to provide adequate and safe service.” For any costs beyond that threshold, PG&E could use bonds its customers would pay off over time, pending approval from the utilities commission.

The commissioners voted to create the criteria and methodology they will use to determine that specific threshold at a later date.

In a statement after the vote, PG&E spokesman James Noonan reiterated the utility’s position that “the devastating impact of extreme weather” is one of the most pressing issues California faces. He said SB901 “took steps to address several urgent needs.”

And PG&E wants the utilities commission to move quickly, he said.

“We believe all stakeholders can agree there needs to be a timely resolution of the proceeding ... which will establish a threshold for utilities to pay claims without causing harm to customers, before allowing costs to be recovered through the issuance of bonds,” Noonan said in the email.

The commission said that a more detailed memo due out in March will lay out a timeline for the stress test’s introduction.

Protesters don’t want the utilities commission to move forward at all. They want PG&E to become a publicly owned utility — a possibility the commission has said it is considering in a separate proceeding.

“If it’s PG&E that caused a problem, or caused a fire, or caused deaths, they should have to pay as much as is necessary, as much as is possible,” Tyler Breisacher said in public comments to commissioners.

As the commissioners moved to a vote, protesters chanted “PG&E, no more greed, democratize our energy.”

Picker has said he thinks the same criteria and methodology his commission will create for the 2017 fire costs can be used for a 2018 fire. That could help PG&E absorb the staggering liability it may face if it’s found responsible for the Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in state history that killed 86 people and destroyed nearly 19,000 structures in November.

But it’s not clear at all if the utility still has the legislative support it would need for such a move. And the protesters have said they will continue to resist what they see as efforts to bail out PG&E, which they have described as corrupt.

A coalition of groups — including the Democratic Socialists of America’s San Francisco chapter, the East Bay Clean Power Alliance and Communities for a Better Environment — released a statement after the meeting vowing to “keep organizing to hold the (commission) and state officials accountable to Californians over corrupt for-profit utilities.”

J.D. Morris is a business reporter covering energy, including PG&E, Tesla and California’s clean power initiatives.

Before joining The Chronicle, he was the Sonoma County government reporter for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, where he was among the journalists awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the 2017 North Bay wildfires.

He was previously the casino industry reporter for the Las Vegas Sun. Raised in Monterey County and Bakersfield, he has a bachelor’s degree in rhetoric from UC Berkeley.